


Mad Scientist

by hollyanneg



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Meeting, Alternate Universe - College/University, Happy Ending, M/M, a bit fluffy and a bit angsty, sort of a reverse You've Got Mail
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-25 05:08:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21830506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollyanneg/pseuds/hollyanneg
Summary: Adam can’t get any work done because of his obnoxiously loud office neighbor. On the bright side, his new friend’s roommate is incredibly hot…
Relationships: Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 26
Kudos: 269
Collections: Pynch Secret Santa 2019





	Mad Scientist

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tinyarmedtrex](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinyarmedtrex/gifts).



> Another noisy neighbor fic, with a bit of a twist. I hope you like it!

It was like this: Adam didn’t have his own office. None of the grad students did. But he was lucky; the two students he shared with were hardly ever there. He could work in peace. He had his own desk—a big one—and because the room locked, he could leave things there instead of carrying them around. There was a microwave and refrigerator down the hall that he was allowed to use. He didn’t even care that the office was in the dimly-lit basement of an old, converted gym. It was his, and he loved it.

For the first few weeks.

The racket began on a Sunday night, of all godforsaken times. No one should’ve been in the building except Adam, who was always there. 

Something that sounded distinctly like the call of some bird of prey screeched down the hallway.

Adam sat up from where he was slumped over his desk, suddenly on alert. The sound came again. Was there a hawk _in the building?_ He went to the door and peeked out tentatively—nothing unusual. But he heard the sound a third time and thought to himself that he probably ought to find the bird and let it out. Or maybe call maintenance? He didn’t really feel like getting maimed the night before an exam.

But curiosity took him out until the hallway. He heard another sound, like something falling, and then the bird’s screech again.

It was coming from behind the door at the end of the hall, which just added to the mystery. He’d never been in there, but he thought it was some kind of storage room. His office shared a wall with it, whatever it was. How could a bird have gotten in there? He went down the hall and tried the door—locked.

Another crashing sound came from within. _I don’t have time for this shit,_ he thought. He went back to his office, used the ancient landline to call maintenance, and told himself it wasn’t his problem anymore.

He got back to work, and a few minutes later he heard the maintenance crew come and go. But the birdcalls didn’t stop. All. Night. Long.

By morning, he was exhausted and irritable, but reasonably well-prepared for his exam. He tore a piece of paper out of his notebook and wrote:

_I have no idea what’s going on in there, but if someone is in charge of the bird, can you please shut it up? People are trying to work. Sincerely, disgruntled neighbor in 008._

He taped it to the storage room door.

Grad school was so weird.

He slept through most of Monday—after the exam, of course—so he wasn’t back in his office until Tuesday afternoon. There was a note waiting on his door. 

_Dear 008, some of us are also trying to work, so kindly fuck off about my birds. Sincerely, Birdmaster 3000_

All Adam could really register was _birds._ Multiple. He crumpled up the note and tried not to think about it anymore.

Except that by the end of the week, he’d heard not just the hawk again, but a buzzing that sounded like some kind of corvid, a chattering voice that was surely a parrot, and a galloping noise that clearly belonged to some hooved animal. Before he left on Friday, he taped another note to the mysterious door.

_Dear Birdmaster 3000, the noise has gotten completely out of control. Please be advised that I plan to report you and your menagerie to campus authorities. Sincerely, 008 (James Bond’s cousin)_

He wasn’t sure if he was actually going to go to the trouble of reporting this (again), but he hoped the threat would put an end to whatever this was.

On Saturday, he had lunch with Gansey. Gansey was an exuberant history student who had befriended him at the new grad student orientation day and seemed determined that they should be best friends. He’d been alarmingly enthusiastic about the Saturday lunch plans because he’d convinced his actual best friend, Ronan, to come along. Gansey was always talking about Ronan, about his “prodigious” musical skills and the “magical” farm he lived on and how he was “the most fantastic person I’ve ever met, present company excluded.”

How could anyone live up to that description?

Adam wasn’t sure what he was expecting based on descriptions like “enthralling” and “a prince among men.” Probably someone handsome, but probably _not_ the hot guy in the black leather who was staring at him intensely from a park bench. That couldn’t be Ronan. Right?

Adam checked his watch. Right time. Right place.

He ventured a little closer to the scary guy and gave it a try. “Hey, are you Ronan?”

Before the guy answered, Gansey appeared, all pastels and smiles, and whisked them off to lunch. So the scary guy _was_ Ronan.

Adam kept sneaking glances at him while they ate, and every time that he looked, Ronan was looking back. Adam didn’t know what to make of such a heavy, level gaze. Any emotion behind it was totally obscured. Ronan didn’t have much to say, and Gansey was pretty much monopolizing the conversation anyway.

He left the table for a minute, though, when he saw someone else he knew, so Adam was alone with Ronan and tried to think of something to say. He managed: “So are you a grad student too?”

Ronan snorted, like that was a ridiculous suggestion. “No.”

Adam’s cheeks blazed hot, and he refused to be cowed. “I thought Gansey said something about you being on campus a lot.”

“I work here,” said Ronan.

“Hmm. Not on the family farm anymore?”

Ronan looked up fast from the napkin origami he’d been working on. “How did you know about that?” He sounded less hostile than he looked.

“Gansey told me.”

Ronan nodded. “Well. Yeah. I do this now instead.” They fell into silence until Ronan offered, “Gansey says you’re going to be a mad scientist or something.”

Adam was amused. “I’m studying biochemistry, so—yeah? I guess?”

“Why did--?”

Then Gansey was back, and Ronan never finished his question, and Adam really wanted to know what it would’ve been.

There was a note waiting for him Monday morning:

_Dear Mr. Bond, I’m pretty sure you’ve already tried reporting me. Don’t waste your time. I’m allowed to be here. Sincerely, Birdmaster. P.S. Please be advised that you have a stick up your ass._

Adam had never seen the word _ass_ written so elegantly before. Birdmaster had nice handwriting at least.

Adam planned to write back—because some petty party of him was enjoying this strange correspondence—but he sat down to study first. After an hour of perfect silence came an enormous crashing sound, louder than anything else he’d heard so far. It sounded like a bull or something of equal size had run through a wall.

Adam raced down the hall. He could hear the parrot chattering away, complaining about whatever had just happened. He banged on the door. “Hello? Is there a human in there?” He tried a few more times before giving up. Birdmaster was not around, apparently, but his menagerie still was.

Adam wrote his note:

_How are you allowed to be here?? Even if that’s true, I’m going to be making some calls about this because I can’t work with the noise. -008_

This time, he really was. Only he realized that he didn’t know who to call about something so strange, so instead he emailed his department head, who liked him, explained the whole situation, and asked if there was anything they could do about it.

A couple hours later, he got a reply:

_Dear Adam,  
Sorry to hear about the noise! I made a few calls, and unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like we can do much about it, however, I may be able to assign you to a different office if you’d like. Let me know. I also made the department that uses that room aware of the issue.  
Best,  
Prof G._

Adam thought that over for a bit. Did he want another office? No other office could possibly be as noisy as this one. But on the other hand, any other office might have come with officemates who actually used it. Adam would no longer have much privacy.

He decided to stay where he was.

A couple of days later, another note: 

_008, I know you’re the reason my boss came down here and yelled at me about noise complaints. Fuck you very much. -Birdmaster_

On his way out, he left a reply: 

_Birdmaster, I have no regrets. -Mr. Bond_

Gansey lived off campus in an old warehouse-turned-loft, which in Adam’s opinion perfectly encapsulated the Gansey enigma. He was so absurdly rich and so unaware of it, and yet he managed to be charming anyway. The loft was like that, too—ridiculous and ostentatious, but when Adam visited, he never wanted to leave.

Except one Saturday night at the end of September. Gansey was having a party. Adam didn’t really do parties, but Gansey desperately wanted Adam to meet a girl he liked and talk him up to her. Adam agreed. He regretted it almost as soon as he arrived, because there were so many more people there than he’d expected. He wanted to turn and bolt, but then Gansey spotted him and pulled him inside and started introducing him to everyone. 

Gansey had invited practically his whole department, including some undergrads, which seemed like a quick way to wreck your own party, if you’d wanted it to be, as Gansey had promised, “a quiet affair.” There were a few other assorted grad students there too, and some people Gansey knew from high school, plus the girl he liked and some of her coworkers. Her name was Blue, and she was cute, and when she started to school Gansey on women’s suffrage, Adam decided he loved her. He was still laughing about the dumbstruck (starstruck) look on Gansey’s face after they’d walked away.

But then he was alone and felt awkward. He meandered around the apartment, clutching his coke and thinking how annoying it was going to be if he was the only sober person there by the end (again).

Then he saw Ronan.

Ronan was alone too, slouched against the wall, looking grumpy but still unfairly hot. He noticed Adam and stood up straighter and looked like he might be thinking about smiling. So Adam walked over and leaned up against the wall, too. “How’s it going?” he asked.

“I hate parties.” Ronan sounded so tortured about it that it made Adam laugh. Ronan glanced at him and looked gratified, like he’d planned that. “And what am I supposed to do when it’s in my own damn house? It’s not like I have anywhere else to go.”

“You live here too?” Adam was surprised.

“Yeah—Dick didn’t tell you we’re roommates?”

Ronan finally turned to look at him directly, and Adam was distracted by demanding blue eyes, but he managed to say, “I mean, he said you lived on a farm.”

Ronan looked away again, which was a shame. “I used to. I don’t anymore.”

“Oh.” That sounded like a topic not to pursue.

While Adam was trying to think of something else to say, Ronan said, “Tell me about your mad scientist classes,” in a tone that matched his eyes.

So Adam spent a few minutes describing them, trying to make them sound interesting instead of hopelessly nerdy. Ronan listened so intently that it made Adam blush. It made him want to keep talking.

Until one of the undergraduate history students—predictably already drunk—crashed into him out of nowhere and spilled his beer all over the floor, splashing Adam’s shoes.

“Learn how to fucking walk,” Ronan snapped at the kid, who mumbled an apology and stumbled away. Ronan looked at Adam and said, “Wanna go outside?”

“What’s outside?” Adam asked, but he followed anyway.

Outside turned out to be the roof of the warehouse, accessible by a sketchy, rusted ladder. “If I die or contract tetanus, I’m blaming you,” Adam said as he climbed.

The roof was barren concrete, with a few pools of standing water. Below them, the city stretched out wide and bright. They stood side by side looking at it for a minute, and Adam said, “I don’t know if that’s beautiful or not.”

Ronan glanced his way. Adam wanted more glances. “You from here?” Ronan asked.

“No.”

“Me neither. You know what’s beautiful? The sky on a clear night in the country.” Ronan rubbed the back of his neck like he was embarrassed to have said that.

“I never had much time to appreciate the night sky when I lived in the country,” said Adam. 

“Too busy just getting by. Maybe I should take an astronomy class as long as I’m doing the mad scientist thing.”

“A true mad scientist would know about every field of science, right? Like Bill fucking Nye.”

Ronan grinned sharply, and it made Adam laugh again. “I love that your idea of a mad scientist is Bill Nye.”

“He’s badass, though, right?”

Adam shook his head, amused. “Sure.”

“So where are you from, anyway?”

Adam tried not to cringe. “Nowhere—a place you leave, not a place you stay.”

Ronan nodded at that. “Feel like you’re somewhere better now?”

“Infinitely. Even if it’s not exactly beautiful. Beautiful can wait.”

After that, they were quiet for a little while, listening to the cars pass by below them. Adam tilted his head back to see if there _were_ any stars—only a smattering, but the moon was clear and low. It was almost romantic. Finally, he said, “I like this better than the party.”

He got a softer grin from Ronan for that. “Figured you might.”

“You know me so well already.” Adam heard the tone of his own voice—teasing, distinctly flirty—and wondered if he was about to make a fool of himself. But Ronan was strangely, starkly lovely in the moonlight, and he was looking at Adam in that same rapt, intense way from earlier, so Adam scooted a little closer to him where they sat on the concrete. He leaned on one arm and looked up at Ronan and said the first thing that came to mind—“You having fun?”

Ronan shrugged one shoulder. “Company’s better up here than downstairs.”

Adam smiled. “I’m flattered.” He decided he was ready for a kiss. He hadn’t been kissed in ages, and suddenly nothing sounded better. He held eye contact for a minute, then looked down at Ronan’s lips, abandoning subtlety.

Whoever closed the space first, it didn’t really matter. They were kissing. Ronan’s hand came up to cup the back of Adam’s head, and Adam grabbed Ronan’s arm to balance himself. The kiss lasted longer than he thought it might. The second one lasted longer than the first. When they separated, he didn’t let go completely. He reached down to hold Ronan’s hand instead and smiled at him. Ronan stared back, looking shocked.

Adam was going to try for another, but then Gansey’s voice bellowed up the ladder shaft. “Parrish? Are you up there?”

For a second, Adam thought about not answering, but that seemed a little mean. He wouldn’t have gotten kissed by a ridiculously hot boy if not for Gansey. So he called back, “Yes.”

“Come back down here!” Gansey demanded. “I’m floundering. I’m running out of conversation topics.”

Ronan raised an eyebrow at Adam. Adam whispered, “That means he’s striking out with the girl he likes.” Ronan rolled his eyes—but fondly, knowingly.

So they went back down the ladder. Adam tried not to be disappointed. The night wasn’t over yet. He would kiss Ronan again before he left. He promised himself.

He got another soda and joined Gansey and Blue, who were standing in the middle of Gansey’s inexplicable cardboard model of the neighborhood. Ronan had followed Adam into the kitchen and now here, and he stayed close as Adam tried to revive the conversation. He finally got Blue talking about the ecology course she was doing at another local university, not his. He asked her a few questions—he was actually interested—and then he tried to pull Gansey back into it by saying, “Did you encounter any strange fauna in your travels?” He was starting to talk like Gansey, he realized. Whoops. But Gansey eagerly launched into a story about his English friend Malory’s interest in birds—birdwatching and bird shows and so on. Ronan made faces behind Gansey’s back, and Adam tried not to laugh. Blue seemed reasonably interested, so that was a win for Gansey.

But then that same drunk history student broke something in the kitchen, and Ronan disappeared to “take care of it,” which presumably meant scaring the shit out of them, and he didn’t come back afterwards.

Another half-hour passed with Adam mostly just listening to the others talk. He was starting to fade. He’d pulled a lot of late nights that week, and he wasn’t really up for another. So he started making his excuses, and he tried to sound casual when he said, “Where do you think Ronan went? I should tell him goodbye.”

“Probably holed up in his room,” said Gansey. “He looked pretty done with the party.”

Gansey walked Adam to the door, so he didn’t get the chance to stop by Ronan’s room, but he wasn’t sure he had the nerve, anyway.

He went home and dreamed about kissing instead.

It was Tuesday. Adam was kicking himself for not having gotten Ronan’s number, or literally any contact info, and he hadn’t seen Gansey since Saturday, so he couldn’t ask. He guessed he could just show up at their place… But no, he wasn’t going to act that desperate.

Midday, he sat on a bench outside one of the science buildings eating his lunch, when he saw a familiar, shaved head peeking out of the crowd crossing the street. Then Ronan saw him too. He looked shy, and Adam smiled, because despite some obvious anxiety, Ronan was heading straight for him. He was holding two cups of coffee, and when he reached Adam’s bench, he hovered there for a minute without saying anything, so Adam took pity on him. “How’s it going?”

“Yeah, good,” said Ronan, and then Adam knew for sure that he was nervous by the way his voice was higher-pitched than usual.

“You want to sit down?”

Ronan nodded, looking relieved. “You want some coffee?”

“It’s for me?” Adam smiled and tried to shift out of study mode and into flirting mode. Ronan nodded and handed it to him. “How’d you find me?” Adam asked.

“Gansey said you hang out around here sometimes.”

“Yeah, I have two classes in this building on Tuesdays, but with a two-hour gap in between, so I hang around and study or whatever.”

Ronan nodded slowly, like he was considering this very carefully, like it was privileged information. 

Adam tried not to laugh. He asked, “What are you up to today?”

“Kind of working—my hours are weird, so I have a break now too.”

Adam decided to be bold. Again, he closed the space between them and said, “I’m glad you decided to spend it with me.”

“Well, I wanted to talk to you,” said Ronan, fast, smashing the syllables together into one long word. “About the other night.”

Adam deflated a little. That didn’t sound good. That sounded like, potentially, _let’s never do that again, please. Actually, better yet, just don’t talk to me again._

Ronan was turning red, and sure enough, he said, “I don’t usually do that.”

“What? Kiss boys?” Adam asked, a little bitter.

“No—well, I mean, yeah, but like—I don’t really kiss anyone. And definitely not like. Shit. I mean. I don’t do one-night stands.” The way Ronan was fumbling was a little adorable, and Adam was a bit relieved, because it wasn’t a rejection yet.

“I wouldn’t really call it a one-night stand,” Adam said. “I mean, we just kissed a little, nothing crazy. And now we’re talking. So it’s definitely not one of those one-night stands where you pretend not to know the other person after.” He smiled, trying to seem encouraging.

Ronan did seem to relax a bit. “Right. Is that a thing? Pretending not to know the person?”

Adam shrugged. “Some people do that, yeah.”

“Shitty.” Ronan commented. He was quiet for a minute, and he looked like he was working through something, so Adam let him. Finally, Ronan said, gruffly, “You want to go on a date or something?”

_Ah._ Adam was so, so pleased. Maybe his flirting was better than he’d thought. “Yeah, I’d like that,” he said, and watched the way Ronan’s eyes flashed, happy, and the way his tension melted away.

“Okay,” said Ronan. “Okay. So like. When?”

_This weekend?_ Adam thought. But that was so far away. But he absolutely, definitely couldn’t do anything on Wednesday. He had a presentation to prepare for. And on Thursday, after presenting, he knew he’d just want to go home. So…

“Friday night?” he suggested.

“Yeah, good,” Ronan nodded. He looked like he was taking it all so seriously. 

Adam smiled and bumped Ronan’s shoulder. “I’m looking forward to it.”

That same happy flash again. “Yeah. Same. So like, dinner?”

“That’s a thing people do,” Adam agreed.

Ronan bumped him back. “A thing we do?”

“Sure.”

Ronan stayed sitting with Adam until he had to go to class. Before that, they’d set a time, 6 p.m., and a meeting place, Adam’s apartment. He’d given Ronan his address. He was oddly impatient for the first time in ages. Friday still wasn’t soon enough.

He was annoyed with himself when he realized he hadn’t gotten Ronan’s number, again, so he couldn’t suggest hanging out before then. Maybe that was for the best? He hoped Ronan would find him outside the science building again—he even lingered there more than usual—but it didn’t happen.

On Wednesday, there was a post-it note on his office door. On it was an illustration of a hand flipping the bird, only the middle finger looked vaguely phallic. It actually made Adam laugh. Birdmaster was not too bad at drawing. 

Friday, Gansey wanted to have lunch again. Adam hoped hoped hoped that Ronan would crash, so he couldn’t help smiling when he walked into the cafeteria and saw that Ronan was indeed there, and that his expression brightened as soon as he saw Adam. 

The three of them sat at a corner table. Adam talked about class and Ronan stole fries off his plate and Adam pretended to be annoyed and Gansey looked at them proudly, which probably meant that he knew about the date but was forbidden to mention it.

On their way out, Ronan started to say, “So we still on--?” but he was interrupted by a girl from Adam’s program who was coming in the door.

“Adam! I missed Grant’s class yesterday. Can I get the notes from you?”

He shot the others an apologetic look and stopped to talk to her. Before walking away, she said, “How’s your office situation?” He had complained to most of his cohort about it by now. “Still hearing random birdcalls?”

“Yeah, and apparently there’s nothing I can do about it,” he said. “Maybe I should study at the zoo—it couldn’t possibly be louder.”

She laughed and waved as she walked off, calling back, “Good luck with that!”

He turned back to Ronan and Gansey. Ronan was suddenly blank-faced in a way that made Adam nervous. His voice, too, was emotionless when he asked, “What was that girl talking about?”

Adam felt uneasy, but he tried to answer lightly. “Just this weird thing with my office—it’s in the basement of Alumni Hall and there’s this room down the hall that apparently has animals in it, and—”

“Dear god,” said Gansey, and he sounded much more dire than the situation seemed to warrant. He was looking at Ronan with concern.

“Are you fucking 008?” Ronan asked.

“Yeah,” said Adam, “how did you—holy shit.” Ronan grew up on a farm. Ronan worked at the university. Was it possible? “Are you Birdmaster?”

Ronan still looked frighteningly stoic. He stared at Adam for a moment, and Adam was sure that he looked a bit shell-shocked. “How—what the hell, Ronan?” he said, for lack of anything more eloquent to say.

Ronan turned and walked away. Gansey scurried after him, only glancing back at Adam, not saying goodbye. They disappeared around a corner.

Adam was left standing there confused and disappointed.

He was pretty certain that the date was off, but he waited around his apartment all evening anyway. With no way to contact Ronan, he texted Gansey instead. It was 6:15. Ronan might just be running late…

_Do you know if Ronan is still coming by my place tonight?_

Gansey didn’t reply.

The more Adam thought about it—and he thought about it all night because he couldn’t sleep—he decided that he didn’t actually care that Ronan was the Birdmaster. He’d like an explanation for whatever was behind that door—and maybe a promise of some occasional peace and quiet—but it didn’t make him dislike Ronan. Some of those notes had actually made him laugh. Some had been pretty vitriolic, though…

It was a moot point. Ronan clearly had no interest in going out with the person who’d gotten him in trouble with his boss.

It was only too ironic that Adam had to go to his office on Saturday. He would’ve avoided it at all costs, at least for a few days, but he realized he’d left a book there that he really needed to study. For better or worse, there was no sign of Ronan in the basement. His room was quiet for once. And there was no note on Adam’s door.

Adam was good at compartmentalizing, so he forced himself to stop thinking about it, and the pressure of suppressed emotion helped him get a lot done, so much that he ended up a week ahead on reading.

And then Monday came, and classes were a relief. School had always been a refuge for Adam in difficult moments. He thought about that, and then he asked himself what was so damn difficult about being stood up by a guy you’d only met four times?

And why did he like Ronan so much after only meeting four times? They’d barely even talked the first time. But there had been some kind of magic happening in the moonlight on that rooftop… (Then he was embarrassed with himself for even _thinking_ something that sappy.)

He asked himself what he could have done differently, but he had no idea.

He ran into Gansey on Tuesday. Gansey was as friendly as ever, but he didn’t mention Ronan, so Adam didn’t either.

Then it was Friday again, and he wondered if Ronan would be eating in the cafeteria that day, and he wondered if he was pathetic enough to go look for him there and decided that he was not. He finally went back to his office just before lunch to change out some books, and he stopped dead in the hallway when he saw a new note on his door.

_I messed up. I’m sorry. -Birdmaster_

What did that mean, he wondered? What was Ronan sorry for? Standing him up? He didn’t want to fool himself. Especially not if it was actually an apology for ever asking him out in the first place.

He hurried inside and wrote a reply.

_If you’re apologizing for the kisses or the coffee or the conversation, please don’t. It was all pretty nice. We can pretend it never happened, though. No awkwardness for Gansey to deal with. -Mr. Bond_

He put it on Ronan’s door, and then he lingered in his office for a while. He hadn’t planned to, but he was hoping that Ronan might respond. Maybe 45 minutes later, there was a knock on his office door, and there was Ronan, like Adam had manifested him by hoping so hard. He was was frowning, but in a way that hinted at a smile to come. He was holding Adam’s note. “It was pretty nice?” he said.

“Well, yeah,” said Adam. He stared at his own note so he wouldn’t have to make eye contact.

“How nice is pretty nice?” Ronan sounded deeply suspicious, and Adam kept looking down to hide a smile.

“Quite nice.”

“Quite,” said Ronan. “But we’re going to pretend it never happened?”

“Well, that’s kind of up to you.”

Since Ronan didn’t say anything, Adam finally looked up. Ronan seemed to be turning over that statement in his head. Then he said, “Can I show you why my room is so loud?”

Adam nodded and followed him down the hall to the mysterious door. Ronan opened it slowly, cautiously. Behind it was a large, kind of industrial room—it looked like maybe it would’ve been a storage area, attached to a loading dock. But now it was Ronan’s menagerie.

The room was noticeably warmer than the rest of the Alumni basement, probably for the animals’ sake. There were a few big bird cages—Adam saw the chatty parrot and the noisy hawk. The hawk had a bandaged wing. An owl twisted its head around to stare at Adam disapprovingly. There was a goat tied to a pole by a long rope, next to some straw bedding and a bowl of water. It seemed very excited to see Ronan, but not as excited as the dog who came limping over, tongue hanging out. Ronan petted it a bit, then turned back to Adam, looking nervous. “So this is what I do,” he said.

“I don’t really understand,” said Adam.

“I work for the veterinary school. Gansey helped me get the job. I don’t have any real training, but I’m getting a vet’s assistant certification thing so this’ll be more legit. I’ve been around animals my whole life—I’m good with birds and farm animals especially.” He blurted this all out quickly, then added, “They treat a lot of injured animals at the vet school, and then they give me certain ones to look after while they’re healing.”

Adam wandered around the room a bit. “That’s pretty amazing,” he said. He walked over to the parrot, who said _hellooo!_ in a way that suggested it was annoyed not to have been acknowledged yet. “Hi,” said Adam. Then, to Ronan, “And you do this… in the Alumni basement?”

Ronan shrugged, still looking uncomfortable. “This is the only room they could find for me. I hate it. It’s so fucking dark in here, and the animals need light while they’re healing—I prop the outside door open when the weather’s okay. And when they’re all secured, obviously.”

The dog, a little terrier, had come over to see Adam now, so he knelt to pet it. “There was a dog in my neighborhood growing up that looked like this,” Adam said. “I loved it.”

“They don’t usually give me dogs,” said Ronan, “but this one was getting bullied by the other dogs at the main kennel.”

“Poor thing,” said Adam, laughing not at the dog but at Ronan’s obvious indignation about canine bullying.

Ronan came over and knelt by the dog, too. It happily stood up to lick his ear. “So that’s the deal,” said Ronan. “I can’t always keep them quiet.”

“Fair enough,” said Adam.

“You aren’t mad?”

“Not anymore.”

Ronan looked at him like he was a complicated puzzle to be solved. “Friday night,” he said, and then nothing else.

“Yeah?”

“I didn’t come over because I thought you wouldn’t want me to.”

“Why?” Adam sat down fully now on the floor, and the dog flopped into his lap.

Ronan, still on his knees, said, “Because I’m Birdmaster. Your nemesis or whatever. I wrote you douchey notes.”

Adam laughed and petted the dog some more. “I wanted you to come,” he said. He figured there was no need to be coy. “Maybe I wasn’t too fond of Birdmaster. Gansey’s hot friend, however? A different story.”

Ronan’s eyes were huge. After a pause, he said, “Okay. So Gansey’s super smart mad scientist friend. The one who fixed cars to put himself through school? It should have been annoying how much Gansey talked about him, but like, instead he just sounded interesting.” Ronan talked to the floor, blushing, “Then he turned out to also be pretty…”

“Sounds like a real catch,” said Adam. To himself, he said, _pretty??!!_ “You should ask him out. Or just, you know, kiss him.”

Ronan looked up. Adam took his hand like the night on the roof and tugged it gently. Ronan came closer and scrunched down so they were on the same level. Adam closed his eyes and felt lips meet his, felt a hand in his hair and another on his waist, sliding around to his back. Ronan said in his ear, “What do I do after I kiss him?”

“Ask him out like he told you to.”

“Oh, right. You want to go out?”

“Yeah.”

Ronan kissed him again. Behind them, the hawk screeched.

**Author's Note:**

> Would anyone actually have Ronan's job? Is that incredibly sketchy? Let's not think about it too hard.


End file.
